Hi, everyone! Here's the latest chapter of 'Jurassic Park: The Story Retold'!
Dedication: Thanks to my friends, JokerandHarley4ever (sorry if I misspelled the username), and Mondhase, and of course, those who have favorited and followed the story, you're the best. Really dedicated to Bob Peck and Richard Attenborough, and just for the heck of it, and because I can, Robin Williams.
Disclaimer: I don't own Jurassic Park. I just own my OCs. Unfortunately, Jurassic Park owns me. Help!
"Hey, Aunt Ellie?" My niece asked me. I twisted my body to see her.
"Yeah, Mariah?" I asked. We were driving to the Visitor's Center, where Mr. Hammond would explain to us how on earth he created dinosaurs, living dinosaurs.
"What other dinosaurs do you think we'll see?" She asked, brushing her bangs out of her face. She'd need a haircut soon, I realized.
"Honestly, I don't know." I shrugged as I turned around in my seat.
We drove up front in front of a large building, at least two stories tall. It was hard to tell with the roof, which was basically a rounded pyramid. As soon as the Jeeps stopped, we hopped out, and started walking up the staircase, quickly followed by the Malcolms.
The building looked even larger from the inside. It was still being worked on, no doubt. In the middle of the room was a T-Rex skeleton attacking a sauropod skeleton.
"Excuse me, Dr. Sattler?" I turned to face Dr. Malcolm's young boy, Arby.
"Yes?" I asked him. He pushed his glasses up his nose and pointed to the sauropod.
"What dinosaur is that?" Arby asked me.
"Probably a Brontosaurus or Diplodocus." I said, glancing at it.
"Cool." He smiled. I couldn't help, but to smile too.
"Hello." A man with red hair greeted us. He had a baseball cap with the Jurassic Park logo on it.
"Ah, Ed Regis. This is our tour group. Everyone, meet Ed Regis, he's the head of the public relations for Jurassic Park, but today, he'll be your tour guide." Mr. Hammond introduced us to him. He smiled and waved at us.
"John, your granddaughter, Agatha, and Nigel would like to join us. Should I give them the thumbs up?" Mr. Regis asked.
"Of course. Why don't you go fetch them? We'll be in the auditorium." Hammond told him. Regis smiled and ran off. We climbed up another flight of stairs, some of us shouldering backpacks.
"Now, as I was saying to Dr. Levine and the Gennaros, we've set out to make the most advanced amusement park in the world, combining all the latest technologies. I'm not talking rides, you know. Everybody has rides. We made living biological attractions so astonishing they'll capture the imagination of the entire planet!" Mr. Hammond said, leading us up the staircase. He had one thing right, what he had, once opened, would definitely capture the entire planet's imagination. I saw Alan giving a sad smile towards the skeletons.
"What do you think?" I asked him.
"I think we're out of a job." He said.
"Don't you mean 'extinct'?" Dr. Malcolm caught up to us.
"Ian..." Ashley, again, whacked the back of her brother's head.
"She loves doing that to me." He explained to me. I giggled and felt my face warm up a bit.
"In fact, I love it so much, I'll do it again." The brunette whacked his head again.
"Now, wait a second, Ash, we talked about this. I'm the older brother, which means that I'm the one that should be whacking your head." He tried to explain to his sister. She just shrugged.
We kept following Hammond as he opened a door that led into a darkened room, with some seats. He gestured to the girls to go in first. I sat in the front row, Mariah right behind me. Dr. Malcolm entered the room and gestured to the seat next to me.
"This seat taken?" He asked me.
"Oh, no, Dr. Malcolm." I shook my head.
"You know, there's a reason people have first names. Please, call me Ian." He insisted.
"Right Ian." I said, hesitantly. For someone who didn't seem too physically active, he was pretty handsome. He smiled and sat down next to me, his son sitting on the other side of him. Alan sat on my other side. John stood in front of the screen. Behind him, a version of himself walked up to John on the screen. He looked down at the real Hammond.
"Hello, John." The screen Hammond greeted the real Hammond.
"Say hello." The real John encouraged us.
"Hi." I hesitantly said.
"What's up?" Kelly Malcolm asked, waving. There was a knock on the door as Mr. Regis, a blonde woman, and a young man entered the room.
"Excuse us." Mr. Regis apologized as the three of them sat down behind us.
"Oh, I just realized. I've got lines." Real John said as he started to search his pocket and fumbled with his little index cards.
"Fine, I guess, but, how did I get here?" The screen John said, continuing without the real...doppelganger, I guess.
"Uh..." Real John found his place. "Here, let me show you. First I'll need a drop of blood. Your blood!" Screen Hammond extended his index finger and real Hammond mimed poking a needle in it.
"Ouch, John! That hurt." Screen John scolded real John, pulling his finger back.
"Relax, John. It's all part of the miracle of cloning." Real John had to explain to screen John. Then, a John Hammond appeared to the screen Hammond, then another, then another, so forth and so one, all of them saying to each other, 'Hello, John.'
A couple of laughs came from the audience.
"Cloning from what?" Rick leaned forward.
"Loy extraction has never recreated an intact DNA strand." Alan added.
"Not without massive gaps." Ian corrected Alan.
"Paleo-DNA?" Dr. Levine asked. He sat on the other side of Alan.
"From what source?" Mariah quickly asked.
"Where do you get a 100 million year old dinosaur blood?" I said, looking at Alan. Mr. Gennaro quickly shushed us.
"Well! Mr. DNA! Where'd you come from?" I looked up on the screen and now saw an animated character join the Hammond's on the screen. They had now stopped greeting each other.
"From your blood! Just one drop of your blood contains billions of strands of DNA, the building blocks of life!" Mr. DNA explained.
"A DNA strand, like me, is a blueprint for building a living thing! And sometimes animals that went extinct millions of years ago, like dinosaurs, left their blueprints behind for us to find! We just had to know where to look!" Mr. DNA took over the show on the screen.
"A hundred million years ago, there were mosquitoes, just like today. And, just like today, they fed on the blood of animals. Even dinosaurs!" Mr. DNA explained. The screen showed an animated mosquito biting a Brachiosaur
"Sometimes, after biting a dinosaur, the mosquito would land on a branch of a tree, and get stuck in the sap!" The screen showed a real mosquito becoming enclosed by amber.
"After a long time, the tree sap would get hard and become fossilized, just like a dinosaur bone, preserving the mosquito inside!" There was an animation of two diggers digging and finding a fossilized piece of amber. It...it was all coming together now! A possible way to create dinosaurs, real, living ones!
"This fossilized tree sap, which we call amber, waited millions of years, with the mosquito inside, until Jurassic Park's scientists came along!" A scientist peered into the fossilized mosquito through a microscope.
"Using sophisticated techniques, they extract the preserved blood from the mosquito, and..." A long needle was inserted into the thorax of a mosquito and extracted the blood from it. "Bingo! Dino DNA!"
Mr. DNA jumped in front of DNA codes, going at a speed fast enough to give me a headache.
"A full DNA strand contains three billion genetic codes! If we looked at screens like these once a second for eight hours a day, it'd take two years to look at the entire strand! It's that long! And since it's so old-" Mr. DNA was ran over by a line of code. He reappeared. "And since it's so old, it's full of holes! That's where our geneticists take over!" I massaged my temple. After this, I'd need aspirin.
Mr. DNA continued to explain how computers and scientists completed the code, and how dinosaurs were made.
"And now, we can make a baby dinosaur." Mr. DNA said as an animated Brachiosaur hatched.
"All this has some dramatic music, da dum da dum da dum dum, a march or something, it's not written yet, and the tour moves on..." Mr. Hammond threw a switch and safety bars appeared out of nowhere and fastened us to our seats. I looked at the bar, frustrated. Then, the seats moved out of the auditorium, or so it seemed like. I saw the lab, and a bunch of scientists walking about.
"Our fertilization department is where the dinosaur DNA takes the place of the DNA in unfertilized emu or ostrich eggs and then it's on to the nursery, where we welcome the dinosaurs back into the world!" Mr. DNA was explaining. I heard Mr. Gennaro and John mumbling in the background. I started to lean against the bar, trying to get it off of me.
"Wait a minute! How do you interrupt the cellular mitosis?!" Alan turned back and asked John.
"Can we see the unfertilized host eggs?" I asked John excitedly.
"Shortly, shortly..." He mumbled. Mr. DNA continued to babble in the background.
"Can't we stop this thing?!" Rick leaned on the bar that held him in place.
"Sorry! It's kind of a ride!" Mr. Hammond explained.
"Let's get outta here!" Levine whispered to us. He pushed with all his might, Ian and Alan helping. Finally, the bars on the whole isle set us free and we all got up, rushing out the door.
"Hey! You can't do that!" Mr. Gennaro yelled after us. We didn't listen.
"Can they do that?" Gennaro asked.
"Apparently they can." His daughter answered him.
Alan reached the door to the hatchery and tried opening it, but it wouldn't budge.
"Relax, Donald, relax. They're scientists, they ought to be curious." John was explaining to Donald.
"Dr. Grant, just a minute, dear boy." John gently pushed Alan out of the way, and pushed a code to open the door. The door opened and we stepped into a cubicle and waited for John to enter another code. The door finally opened into the hatchery.
The hatchery was a vast, open room, bathed in infrared light. Long tables ran the length of the place, all covered with eggs, their pale outlines were obscured by a hissing, low mist that was all through the room.
"Good day, Henry and Izabella." Mr. Hammond greeted two people who had their backs turned to us.
"Oh, good day, sir." They both greeted him, at the exact same time. Henry glared at Izabella, who just smiled and leaned on him. Alan went to a round table, where one of the eggs was shaking violently, a robotic arm trying to steady it. I joined him, as did everyone else.
"Ah, perfect timing! I'd hoped they'd hatch before I had that meeting to attend." Henry said, taking notes with his clipboard.
"Henry, why didn't you tell me? You know I insist on being here when they're born." John slapped a hand on Henry's shoulder and then put on some plastic gloves. The egg began to crack, and the robotic arm moved out of the way. Hammond began helping out the baby by removing egg fragments.
"Oh my God." I kept repeating over and over. John kept encouraging the dinosaur.
"They imprint on the first living creature they come in contact with. That helps them to trust me. I've been present for the birth of every animal on this island. Just look at that." He explained in an almost dreamy voice.
"Surely not the ones that have bred in the wild?" Ian said, sitting in a chair.
"Actually, they can't breed in the wild. Population control is one of our security precautions here. There is no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park." Dr. Henry told us. Alan and I glanced at each other and I barely managed to suppress a smile. I heard some whispering from Dr. Izabella.
"Izabella, sometimes I find it hard to believe that we're engaged!" Dr. Wu scolded. I looked up at the two. His face was a bright red. Must have had something to do with the unauthorized breeding.
"I know, right?" His fiancée said, smiling. Henry scoffed and continued taking notes on his clipboard.
"Again, how do you know that they can't breed?" Ian continued asking.
"Because all the animals in Jurassic Park are females." The female scientist told him.
"We've engineered them that way." Henry added. I returned my attention back to the egg, and now, the baby dinosaur was almost free.
"Could I have a tissue please?" Hammond asked.
"Certainly." Dr. Ling handed him one. Alan now picked up the dinosaur and held it in his hands, carefully.
"Blood temperature feels like high eighties." He observed.
"Wu or Ling?" John asked his scientists.
"Ninety-one." Wu replied almost immediately.
"Homoeothermic? It holds that temperature?" Alan asked him. Dr. Wu nodded. "Incredible."
"But again, how do you know they're all female? Does someone go into the park and, uh, lift up the dinosaurs' skirts?" Ian asked.
"We control their chromosomes. It's not that difficult." The female scientist replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
"All vertebrate embryos are inherently female anyway. It takes an extra hormone at the right developmental stage to create a male, and we simply deny them that." Wu explained, more detailed.
"John, the kind of control you're attempting is not possible. If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories. It crashes through barriers. Painfully, maybe even...dangerously, but and...Well, there it is." Ian gestured to the baby dinosaur. I like what he was saying. He was so...good with words.
"There it is." John nodded and resumed his attention to the baby.
"You're implying that a group composed entirely of females will..." Wu began, but quite didn't how to finish his sentence.
"Breed?" Ling finished his sentence. They said them both in almost a teasing way.
"I'm simply saying that life, finds a way." Ian defended himself.
"What species is this?" Alan asked suddenly.
"Uh, it's a Velociraptor." Dr. Wu told him. I slowly looked at Alan and he looked at me. Then, our attention turned to John.
"You bred raptors?" Alan asked, not even wanting to know.